It’s interesting how different forms of media can be your excuses and justifications for being sneaky and conniving, and sometimes even kind of a jerk. Last Monday, I was looking for someone to eat lunch with at Trillium. The more friends I asked, the more likely one of them would have a break a the same time as me, so I proceeded to text message four different friends if they wanted to go to lunch. None of these four friends knew each other and text messaging allowed me to wait for their responses and basically pick and choose amongst them if I wanted to. By texting rather than calling all of them one by one, it was much easier for me to get out of going to lunch with one instead of the other because it was asynchronous so I had time to think and respond, or even not respond if I chose. With myself as the locus, I used the mediated channel of text messaging as a buffer. If any of them figured out that I had asked them to go to lunch and actually just invited anyone because I wanted someone to sit with, or worse, blown them off, I could better manage my impression through a mediated channel rather than face to face. This situation fell into the bottom right hand corner of the Impression Management chart labeled “Confess” for Self, Negative. It contradicted the Media Richness theory, because if I had really wanted to find someone to eat with as efficiently as possible, I would have just called someone and convinced them to come.
The second instance of media selection supports the Media Richness theory. I was on the phone with my mom and she wanted to know the street address of my house that I’m living in this year as well as the web address of my Cornell Daily Sun article that had just been published so she could read it. Even though I was on the phone with her at that time, I told her I would email her the information because it would be so much easier and less time consuming for the both of us. It took me about 10 seconds to send her the information through email, while over the phone I would have had to slowly repeat it as she copied it down and then read it back to me to make sure it was correct. I chose the more mediated channel, email, over the richer channel, the phone, not because I had to manage a negative self-impression, but because it was more efficient.
These examples seem to show that which model we live by depends on the situation and what we value in that particular situation: self-impression or time and efficiency.
3 comments:
I had a similar experience for my blog post - one of my conversations supported the Media Richness Theory, and the other supported O'Sullivan. I agree that sometimes, efficiency is essentially all that matters. There was really no impression to manage when you gave your mom that information; it was a totally straightforward task. Perhaps the more unequivocal a task is, the more likely it is to support the Media Richness Theory. Maybe that means the theories should be combined: for simple tasks, you're expected to use a lean medium, but for equivocal tasks, it depends on the locus/valence.
I definitly agree about how texting is easier to clearly communicate with friends rather than calling each one individually.The asynchronous aspect is one that I like as well because its the worst thing when you have a friend on the phone and the awkward silence comes when they ask you to do something that you don't want to do but you don't know how to phase "no" politely. I always use texting myself to get a straight-forward answer from friends because I know that a lot of people our age prefer over talking on the phone. This is a really good example and point about Media selection.
I thought your first situation was an interesting one, in which you chose to use a lean media to be deceptive. I disagree with your analysis, however, when you say that this situation does not support the Media Richness Theory. I'm sure that the message you send was a very unequivocal one, - just asking someone if they wanted to get lunch. It was probably so unequivocal that you probably sent the exact same message to all four people you asked to lunch. With such a simple message, it seems only natural that you would chose a lean media, such as text messaging. This follows the Media Richness Theory completely.
I also liked how in the second example, you found it would be easier to email your mom the information she wanted, even though you were already talking to her over the phone. Your analysis of this situation was perfect, in my opinion. I think I should try this method sometime. It'll probably save me a lot of time...
-Logan Douglas
Post a Comment